Western political thought
Political thought
Political theory
Political philosophy
Political thought
All encompassing terms covering a diverse range of ideas, beliefs and perspectives about
politics that have been expressed throughout history.
Political theory
Theory is more precise and thought is more abstract.
It is the development of systematic explanation and frameworks for understanding political
actions, political behaviour and political institutions. It focuses on concepts like equality,
liberty and justice and analyses how these concepts work in different contexts and seeks to
provide comprehensive and coherent understanding of political concepts.
Political philosophy
It deals with fundamental questions of politics. Like the Greek says that all aim of political
institutions is to secure a good life. Philosophers ask what actually is good life, what actually
is justice, why it should be there, what if not. So from philosophy, thought is created and from
thought theory is created. So it deals with fundamental questions of politics such as the
nature of justice, purpose of the state. It examines the philosophical foundation of political
ideas and systems often through abstract reasoning and conceptual analysis.
Political thought is raw material, political theory is an organized framework and
political philosophy is deep exploration of fundamental concepts.
Nature of Political thought
Political word meaning is any institution, organization or process which affects the entire
community and acquires the character of Political. So when an organization is designed to
regulate the whole community it takes on the character of polity. So polity or political denotes
an organization where rules and decisions are taken for the whole community and authority
is exercised on each member of the community. According to Sheldon, of all the
authoritative institutions in the society the political arrangement has been singled out
as being uniquely concerned with what is common to the whole community.
Etymologically means city states who were small communities with compact culture and all
different social, economic activity were well knit with each other and for them any activity for
producing good life for the whole community were considered part of politics. But today we
have a private and public sphere but Greek didn't have that for them everything was knitted
together. Thus Political is any organisation or process which deals with the totality of
the community.
Politics deals with activities of people or interaction of people which are aimed towards
securing and keeping power. Today politics focuses on power dynamics more.
What political thought deals with
Exposition of ideas,values and proposals on everything political. It also involves changing
these ideas, and often revising them drastically for a total break from the past or new
beginning. It performs a critical function by giving critique of status quo.
It also deals with political institutions and structures like developing theories of the state,
legal frameworks, division of power and also linkages with other social sciences.
It is a normative quest for what should be. This is the underlying motivation behind all
thought.
It is a key component of political science. Most vocabulary in political science comes from
thought. Political thought varies in time and space but political science is interested in
comparison of various thoughts and theories emerging in various civilizations. Developing
ideas on the nature of politics for political science, political thought helps here so it gives raw
material to political science and vision and direction to politics.
Politics assumes political activities, political thought studies them and seeks to discover
objectives of these activities and give them a shape and a vision and build new concepts.
Politics gives us an account of political activities and political thought gives us political
education. Politics is knowledge about political conduct and political thought develops
theories of political conduct. Politics therefore identifies the direction in which political
thought moves and political thought guides the future direction of politics.
Relation between political science and political thought
Political science is a complete discipline whereas Political thought is historic whereas
science is more focused on scientific empiricism. So history is characteristic of political
thought whereas science is characteristic of political science.
The nature of political thought is often philosophical whereas Political science is empirical.
Political thought is a value laden exercise whereas political science tries to be value free.
Political thought understands the present with help of the past and therefore builds the future
in the present. Whereas political science mainly deals with the present.
Books of political thought have no concluding chapter. Theory say it has finality
What Political science gets from Political thought
Political Thought presents data at disposal of political science for lateral scrutiny.
It gives political science key concepts and terminology.
Harmeneutics is study of interpretation of text in order to grasp its real and hidden meanings
Why we need proper interpretation
Political thinkers deals with complex issues
Obscurantism is deliberately making sentences difficult so that few understand and escape
persecution and to maintain a monopoly of knowledge.
Each text or thought consists of two types of statements, contemporary relevance and
perennial relevance.
Classic is timeless wisdom
Approaches to interpretation
1. Textual approach- interpret as it is and don't try to interpret in historical perspective
as historicist approach do and say in classics you would get text as timeless wisdom
regardless of history. Leo Strauss said that look at Germany under hitler and you still
saying that best form of govt as liberal democratic but Hitler used same system to
come to power so man are still in chains and there is crisis still what we should do
politically so we should go to classics. He said the crisis of our time is a consequence
of the crisis of today's political philosophy as we don't have a good political
framework till now.
It implies we should focus on the language of the given text in order to understand its
real meaning. It is based on the belief that texts of classics contain expressions of
eternal truth. Leo Strauss is the chief exponent of this approach. He claims that the
works of Plato and a handful of other authors contain the whole truth about politics.
Strauss and his followers rejected the historicist views that different ages had
different mentality and outlooks which were no longer relevant to the present age.
Strauss argues if we can decipher the real meaning of the encoded meaning of the
old philosophers we would certainly benefit collectively as society by knowledge
valuable embodied therein.
Critique of textual approach
1. Identifying what are classics
2. Most classical texts contain a mixture of statements that contain statements
which are relevant for all times. According to Sabine a political theory or
thought covers 3 kinds of factors number one is factual that is statements
about state of affairs secondly causal that is identifying causes of events that
have taken place and valuational that is what can be done to correct the
situation.
3. Quentin Skinner says textual approach will produce historical absurdities
which he terms as mythologies. Three types he identified one is mythology of
doctrines- these are the most persistent mythology created by scholars who
expect that a classical writer will always enunciate some fundamental
concepts. Example marsilius of padua 14 century Italian thinker where he
made stray remarks about executive role of rulers and legislative role of the
people the scholars started saying he gave separation of power concept.
Second use of similar terminology if they used that we use today like sir
Edward cook a english jurist observed that common law of England can
sometimes override statutes then people started saying he invented judicial
review. Second is the mythology of coherence- some classical writers are not
altogether consistent or coherent in their ideas and there are contradictions
also but the textualist tries hard to find such coherence to prove his
greatness. Third is mythology of prolepsis- it is representation of something
as existing before it actually does. Like popper criticising Plato for
totalitarianism which is actually a modern phenomena.
